PCIe 2.0 using only 1 video card, is it faster?

ginbong46Oct 24, 2007, 3:44 PM

according to the X38 article on toms this is the new specs of PCIe 2.0:

" PCI-Express 2.0

Where PCI Express is concerned, the X38 has an advantage over all of its competitors: it is the first chipset to support the PCI Express 2.0 standard. However, this only applies to the two x16 PCIe slots - the four x1 slots and the single x4 slot are attached to the South Bridge of the ICH9 and are therefore still limited to PCI Express 1.

With PCI Express 2.0, the frequency of the serial pathways doubles from 2.5 GHz to 5 GHz, giving each PCIe lane a 500 MB/s transfer rate. This is true not only for the graphics card, but any component that uses the new interface, be it a network controller or a sound card.

By the time cards appear that are actually able to utilize this bandwidth, Intel will probably already have introduced newer chipsets. Thus, at this point the PCI Express 2.0 interface is a nice addition, but doesn't really contribute to future proofing the board per se. "

does this mean even 1 video card by itself not in crossfire mode is also faster than in a PCIe slot in a P35 mobo?..

the reason i am asking is because i do not know the specs of the old PCIe slots..

i amd not righ and that confic u see in my sig , i have saved my money for 3-4 years and after that i bought my "Dream RIG " , its awsome and good and i am SURE it will fine for a 1-2(or more ) years i upgrade from a P4 and FX5700 graphic

Not to worry. No current cards can push the limits of the current pcie 1.0. No new cards will REQUIRE the use of pcie-2.0, or they would not sell very many. I doubt that new cards will exceed the limits of the current pcie-1.0, either. By the time VGA cards can exceed pcie-1.0 capabilities, I expect X38 and lesser mobo's to be obsolete.

Its just like the new 8Pin CPU power connector, its there but you don't have to use an 8Pin to overclock your CPU. My mobo has an 8Pin CPU power connector but at first I wasen't using it with my OC of 3.6GHz (E6600) because my older PSU didn't have the 8Pin plug it had the 4Pin plug.

When I upgraded my PSU it had the 8Pin plug so I used it and didn't notice any difference. Its there for future Quad core processers. It will be sometime before the PCI-E 2.0 is utilised, but when the time comes the PCI-E 2.0 slots will already be there just waiting to be used. Some mobo's have them now, these mobo's will be outdated by the time Graphics cards start to use it.

What I guess it means is that the card will work in both the new slot, or the old slot. I also think that the performance will be identical if installed in either type of slot. I have no inside knowledge of this, but all new products that I can remember with this type of issue have been able to work both ways with no real performance difference.

I am starting to see this more and more, I don't understand how people can think this way...

INCREASING THE SPEED OF A BUS DOES NOT INCREASE THE SPEED OF THE DEVICE!

Its just like when they brought out SATA. Harddrives just now are able to hit 80MBps, which would still fit in the PATA specs. (ATA100/133) We are just now being able to hit the bandwidth provided by AGP, PCIe has been out how long? (Long enough to get to version 2)

Think of it this way. The bus is a road. All roads have speed limts, so the size of the bus equals the speed limit for the road. Any device plugged into the bus is a vehicle on the road. In this case, the PCIe 1 bus is a nice four lane highway, with a speed limit of 70MPH. The problem is that no device can hit that speed, so you are either a bicyclist, or riding some other slow form of transportation. What happens if you get put on the autobahn, or the speed limit is changed to 140MPH? Nothing, you are still limited by how fast you can petal. Just because you are using SATA, or PCIe 2, it doesn't matter. You will still be held back by the slower device plugged into it. These things are being brought out not because they are needed now, but because they will be needed in the future.

It said the new card WILL support PCIe 2.0 meaning it will support the faster slot speed?..

The new 2950 Pro WILL support the PCI-E 2.0, but WILL not be able to use the extra bandwidth. It will not use the faster PCI-E 2.0 bus though, if it did it would beat the 8800 GTX for 249.99 and that won't happen.

and the 2950PRO card from AMD/ATI is PCIe 2.0 at 90MPH its not reaching 140MPH yet, but it would be a waste to put in a PCIe 1.0 slot going at a slower 70MPH..

you get my point? that is the whole reason i am asking and you answered it perfectly

buttom line is. if you are waiting for a PCIe 2.0 for example the 2950PRO card to come out; then X38 is the way to go. or am i still wrong?!

The difference in the PCI-E 2 cards won't be so much in their interface speed because they won't be able to use up the bandwidth of PCI-E 1, it will be in how they handle power. The PCI-E 2 standard allows for more power to be supplied by the socket which will decrease the amount of additional power connectors needed. I would imagine that since the two sockets are compatible that cards will still have connectors for a PCI-E power cable or two depending on the card but if it has 2 connectors and you are using a PCI-E 2 slot you might only have to use 1 cable.

As others have said, the 8800GTX is the first card to have surpassed the bandwidth of the AGP slot and Raptors still use the SATA 1.5 interface because even though we have PCI-E 1 and now 2 and SATA 3 the hardware isn't close to using all the bandwidth available.

In your shoes(minus the itch) I would look for the lowest cost P35 board that has the features you need.Not only will you save a few bucks which you can apply toward something else like cpu or vga card, but you will get a mobo that has had lots of the early glitches worked out of it. The X38 boards are very new, and the chipset has already been withdrawn for revisions that are hopefully fixed. The chipset makes virtually no difference in application performance, compared to the cpu. I would be surprised at more than a 2% difference in real application(vs. synthetic benchmark) performance. The X38 is not future-proof. It will not run the nehalem processors due out in a year. If you are into aggressive overclocking, then, maybe the X38 is ok.

As to the vga card, You never get your money back on a temporary card, particularly when there is an improved card on the horizon. I would wait a week, at least to see what the 8800GT looks like. If you can't wait, at least get an EVGA card and plan on using their step-up program.

okay i understand, but I AM aiming TO BUY a NEXT GEN card.. especially with the news of the 2950PRO supposedly coming out in november 19.

and i will buy the 2600XT as a temporary card for 1-2months..

and if you were in my shoes it would be best to get the X38 right?

because we will never know, the NEXT GEN cards MIGHT surpass PCI-E 2.0 bandwidth right?

anymore thoughts on this please?..

its not the CARDS that are limiting the bandwidth now. its the rest of the system. right now, we cant consistantly fill a 16x 1.0 slot. yes, in bursts we can, and some testing setups (NOT what you can test with via commonly avail software).

if you must get a next gen card, I would do so, and wait on the next gen mobo until we have more options avail.

okay i understand, but I AM aiming TO BUY a NEXT GEN card.. especially with the news of the 2950PRO supposedly coming out in november 19.

and i will buy the 2600XT as a temporary card for 1-2months..

and if you were in my shoes it would be best to get the X38 right?

because we will never know, the NEXT GEN cards MIGHT surpass PCI-E 2.0 bandwidth right?

anymore thoughts on this please?..

My thoughts?-Clearly, you understand what is written on this board.-We are not in your shoes. Your leading the question. People told you what they would do.-I'm not sure what you're looking for. Peoples approval of what you want to do?

In your shoes(minus the itch) I would look for the lowest cost P35 board that has the features you need.Not only will you save a few bucks which you can apply toward something else like cpu or vga card, but you will get a mobo that has had lots of the early glitches worked out of it. The X38 boards are very new, and the chipset has already been withdrawn for revisions that are hopefully fixed. The chipset makes virtually no difference in application performance, compared to the cpu. I would be surprised at more than a 2% difference in real application(vs. synthetic benchmark) performance. The X38 is not future-proof. It will not run the nehalem processors due out in a year. If you are into aggressive overclocking, then, maybe the X38 is ok.

As to the vga card, You never get your money back on a temporary card, particularly when there is an improved card on the horizon. I would wait a week, at least to see what the 8800GT looks like. If you can't wait, at least get an EVGA card and plan on using their step-up program.

i have decided on the ASUS Maximus Formula if ever i will get the X38, money is not a problem as i have been saving for half a year now..

my current pc was bought in feb '04 and its getting old. i bought the asus 9600xt and the amd athlon 2500+ with corsair 512mb ddr 400mhz value ram

now i want something different, i am not prepared to spend $700 on a 11month old GTX.

i would like to spend $700-900 on a card that is 2weeks-1month old, not a aged GTX

that is my primary reason for waiting for the NEXT GEN's

so the practical solution would be the X38 with DDR2 ram right?.. considering im waiting for the next gen's and i doubt ASUS would release a bugged up board.. that would not help their reputation..

My thoughts?-Clearly, you understand what is written on this board.-We are not in your shoes. Your leading the question. People told you what they would do.-I'm not sure what you're looking for. Peoples approval of what you want to do?

Go for it! And come back and tell us how it worked out for you.

yeah kind of just wanting other people's opinions and i am explaining my reason for asking about the PCI-E 2.0 slot so much

i doubt ASUS would release a bugged up board.. that would not help their reputation..

or am i wrong once again?...

Asus's reputation has taken quite a hit within the last year or so with several of their boards including the one I'm currently using (see sig). I lke Asus and I would hope they can get their issues sorted out but currently they are not as reliable as they were a few years ago.

Your proposed setup looks good and if that's what you want then by all means get it. One thing you might want to consider is that within the next month there should be a big rush by everyone to get new products to market for the holiday season. I've read reports of the X48 chipset being released in November and Intel's 45nm Yorkfield and Wolfdale CPU's are projected to be released on November 11th. Also the Nvidia 780i chipset is due to be released in November which is really just the 680i with support for PCI-E 2 and three way SLI, just something you might want to consider.

and the 2950PRO card from AMD/ATI is PCIe 2.0 at 90MPH its not reaching 140MPH yet, but it would be a waste to put in a PCIe 1.0 slot going at a slower 70MPH..

you get my point? that is the whole reason i am asking and you answered it perfectly

buttom line is. if you are waiting for a PCIe 2.0 for example the 2950PRO card to come out; then X38 is the way to go. or am i still wrong?!

Don't you recall I said you were on a bike? I meant a bicycle, not a motorcycle. First everything I've read says these "next gen" GPUs coming out are SLOWER then either the 2900XT or the 8800GTX. Built on a newer process, supports the newer video decoding features found on the lower end cards, these are supposed to be the mid range parts that are so sorely lacking right now. If these are the new midrange cards, then they won't be going 90MPH, more like 30.

Second, You can't compare AMD and Nvidia cards like that. So what if the 2950 (I thought it was the 3800?) is clocked at 825MHz while the Ultra is at 612MHz. Don't you remember, CLOCK SPEED MEANS NOTHING unless you are looking at the same family of processors. AMD's 3500+ is clocked at 2.2GHz and has less L2 cache then the P4 3.0GHz, but the 3500+ is faster, EVEN WITH THE LOWER CLOCK! I don't care what the clock speed of the core or memory is, I don't care how many stream processors a card has, I care which cards are faster then others. If a card is clocked slower or has fewer SP, big deal. (don't forget, AMDs and Nvidia's SP work differently, so one card might need more to do the same work.)

I'm not sure what I'd do in your case. I probably would buy a motherboard that supports PCIe 2 so that I don't have to upgrade again. (I'm not sure it would be the x38.) I WOULDN'T buy it thinking it will make my current cards go faster, I'd buy it because I won't have to upgrade my motherboard to buy a PCIe 2 only card. But seeing as it will probably be a long time before that happens, I personally would get whatever I could find a good deal one.

CLOCK SPEED MEANS NOTHING unless you are looking at the same family of processors.

If you are looking at the same type of processor, then clock speed means something. A faster clocked 2.53 Celeron would not beat a 2.4GHz P4 in gaming. The lower amount of L2 cache and slower FSB negate the faster clock speed. The same is true with GPUs. Midrange cards tend to be faster clocked then their high end brothers. But they have fewer shaders and other things that make them slower overall.

Basically, if you are looking only at C2Ds, or only at 8600GT's, then clock speed means something. But you can't use clock speed as a useful metric if you are comparing the 8600GT to the 2600XT, or the Athlon X2 and the P4/C2D.

anyway, i cant think at the moment i hav been walking for 5KM++ and i finally got home, time to rest...

First thing is you english is very offensive using words with the Fxxx in it. This is something that my son had to see and if I were you dad I'd make you eat a bar of soap!! Clock speeds do mean something only to a family of chips (8800 series) but not different brands like ATI/Nvidia. So your saying that a P4 3GHz is faster than a Core 2 Duo E6600 running at 2.4GHz? You have a lot to learn including yoor bad offensive english!!

Well, I'd be very happy with a P35, myself, though I probably won't upgrade my P965 until Nehalem (the next worthwhile CPU upgrade), but that's because I demand a doubling in performance for under $200...a pretty stringent requirement.

There's no way ATI's new card is going to be slowed down by the PCI e x16 1.1 (or whatever it is) bus, so if I eventually get one, I'm certainly not going to upgrade my motherboard for it.

...and you could probably save the money wasted on an x38 chipset to get yourself a bicycle, which would ease the walking strain.

what the deletedclock speed does mean something.... even if it is 1% difference.....

anyway, i cant think at the moment i hav been walking for 5KM++ and i finally got home, time to rest...

go spend some of your long saved money on another form of transportation if the feet are bloody and you need a rest after walking 5km+.. sorry, I have ZERO sympathy for people who spend $$$ on stuff that they 'want' but dont really 'need'.

To me, feeding the family, keeping the roof over my head, and keeping my transportation running properly comes long before my 'want' to upgrade my pc. which btw, the newest part is an ATI x800xl, on AGP. go figure how old my system is from that. Better yet, send me your long saved $$ so I can buy more food for my family, or even upgrade my lousy pc